Payroll built a bank reconciliation helper

“We'll add backups later.”— Marco, Payroll

Reason:

Because someone said "just add AI". Copied to production via floppy disks.

Built by:

Marco, a warehouse supervisor

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Bootstrap 3 and a dream

Database:

Notion, with one row per customer

Authentication:

backups are encrypted with the same password as production

Deployment:

deployed every time Ravi remembers

Responsible:

Operations, but they strongly disagree

Documentation:

a diagram on a whiteboard, photographed, then deleted

Security situation:

password reset emails contain the old password

Future disaster:

It will send an invoice of €83,000 to the wrong country.

Age: 5.9 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 49% chance of becoming business critical, alive 154x longer than intended, older than the department using it.